THE GIRL WITH THE TWO BABIES

THE GIRL WITH THE TWO BABIES

I have heard of stories about immigration. I have seen touching stories about Mexican “illegal immigrants” in the US on Aljazeera. Those painful moments when a family is thrown away as if they were only stones, not even worthy enough to be pebbles, causing no stir in the water at all, in the big sea of this federation of continents. Many times I found myself thinking they were only stories. And when something is a story, no matter how real it is, it is not part of our reality. Even if it is presented in 3d. People find a way of removing their 3d glasses when the images are getting too close. We keep our illusion intact, that it’s just a story. But somehow that day, all those shields came tumbling down and there I was, in the moment, in the story, witnessing challenges of immigration.

There was this woman on the bus. Many people had developed a kind of dislike for her by the time we reached the border because she got out of the bus every time it stopped, and always left her two screaming children, who, whether she was in or out, were always fighting about something. When we left Nimule the bus was almost leaving her but she got on to a boda-boda and caught up with us. As her children screamed, when she entered, she smiled to them and sat, even though many people claimed she was careless to leave her children in the bus and go wherever she had gone. Even my neighbor gave her own lecture (to the whole bus, given her loud voice, or was it intentional?)about how to care for children.

If you looked into this woman’s eyes, however, you would see something unknown, almost mysteriously distracting her, protecting her, grieving. Beneath her smile and carefree gait, were an uneasiness of spirit and an air of sadness that hovered around her which you noticed, or seemed to notice only if you looked close enough. She looked so young and yet so old. She looked like a girl with two babies she didn’t really plan to have but she loved them anyway. Like she had been forced to grow up and she had not complained. She resembled those women who struggle every hour to survive and make something work for their children, sometimes being tough, hiding their gentleness and sometimes forgetting how to be smooth. But as it is, this is only what she looked to me and I don’t know her real story.

She had reddish, sick eyes, and once in a while they dropped tears which she kept rubbing away with her checkered shawl. Her daughter and son were very noisy, and somehow she was noisy too. By the time we left Nimule, at least everybody knew her.

She had a brown and white checkered bag, which, for lack of space, the conductor had placed in the bus walkway, and passengers going in and out of the bus stepped on until it was covered with a brown coating of dust and mud. But I guess, now that I look back, that she had more important issues than a bag to worry about.

A few meters away from Nimule there was a big clearing, a kind of preparation ground for a fuel station or something of the sort. When the bus parked there I was super annoyed because getting to South Sudan seemed harder than I expected. There seemed to be a check point at every corner, and the bus itself seemed like it enjoyed stop overs better than taking us to Juba, which is what we had paid for.

So the bus did what it liked best, it parked, and a man in a green uniform entered. He checked the passengers’ passports, and, as I have witnessed this happen in different settings in Uganda itself, he said “you are welcome” to the only white person in the bus, Claus. People think white privilege is a thing of Europe and the Americas but they are wrong. White privilege has travelled so far it is now getting rooted in African states, even when the white people are the minority. The man shouted at the rest of the people, keeping his face tight and tough, even when they had all the necessary requirements. Some even wasted their smiles on him and he didn’t return.

When he reached at the seat of the girl/woman with two children, he shouted in Kiswahili ordering her to get out. The woman remained seated. He went on checking other passengers and when he had reached the back of the bus, he came back for her. The woman tried to explain something to him but he seemed not to get it and people around her whispered that she should offer him a bribe. But the man had started raising his voice and had already ordered the conductor of the bus to remove her luggage from the bus by the time these whispers reached her. Meanwhile he held her identity card which showed that she was from DRC (he was reading it quite loudly) and he shouted that he wanted a passport and visa not an ID.

After a few minutes, she got out with her children, and her bags were thrown out. He led her to the shade where other police officers sat, and waved the bus off. I looked at her, dumbfounded. Her face, very young and heavily laden, her children, clueless and unconcerned, her bag, covered in passengers’ shoes’ dust, her fate. I watched the bus, us, drive past her and didn’t know what to think. I listened to the conductor telling the bus how he had warned her and how she had insisted that she had an ID and could not be arrested. I listened to my neighbor tell us how she had noticed there was something fishy about that woman who made the biggest mistake in the world; to have children with a Sudanese man. I listened to all this and still saw in my mind, the girl with the heavy grown face of a woman with two children, her bags, police officers, and the bus driving away as though she were some insect, now forgotten. And my generous with words neighbor was still explaining how they were going to check her stuff and take all the money she had, and deport her.

“That’s how they do it these days” she kept saying.

At this point we had started out into the inside of south Sudan, and there were pretty hills to look at, and a meandering river on both sides of the road, and I was forced to do what women do best; multitasking. So I split my mind into a thousand pieces so I could listen to my neighbor, to the noises of the people on the bus, and still see the beauty outside the bus window, and feel my tight grip on Terry Pratchett’s SOUL MUSIC, while thinking of Christin (my other best friend) who packed it for me, and talk with Angel about the journey so far and still see the image of that girl turned into a woman too soon, as the bus left her behind.

I thought of what would happen to her and where she would go. I felt stupid that I would never know. And even more stupid that I could not do anything about it, to help her. But even more and more stupid that we followed a stupid system. To think that we humans think that because that there are borders separating Uganda from south Sudan and from DRC, gives us the right to stop a young mother from crossing from one place to another. That it did not matter at all that she had two very young children, that she had sick eyes, or that she probably did not have money to pay for a visa. That she didn’t have a place to spend the night. That she had a home in south Sudan perhaps where she would be happy to stay. None of these things mattered. She could be deported, denied access and branded an illegal immigrant, and arrested or treated in many other ways. I did not feel just betrayed by the human race, but by everything we call human, our values and our politics. That we care about so much, yet we don’t understand the basic needs of fellow humans.

I do not claim that I understood her pain. I do not think that she should have been treated better just because she was a woman. No. I believe in equality and that also means equal responsibility for our actions. She could have been a young father in the same situation. I knew very little if not nothing about her. But even that in itself was very depressing and somehow up to now, I cannot seem to rub the picture off my mind, of that girl with two babies being dragged off the bus, awaiting prison and who knew what else. Later when we talked about it, I remember Angel commenting about the cruelty of our neighbor who rushed to judge her without knowing anything about her or her kids. Angel was very disappointed that of all crimes she could find against her, our neighbor had dared to say the woman was stupid to have kids with a Sudanese guy.

“She didn’t even know if the kids’ father was Sudanese. She knew nothing. She had no right!” Angel said.

Claus though reminded us about the ironic question of the bribe. People blamed her for not offering a bribe in time but what would she have done? Offer the bribe in the bus while being watched by passengers or out while being watched by police officers? Either way, the police officer was being watched and conclusions would be made. And no one could blame her for being slow to offer a bribe. And even with our cry for corrupt-free borders and institutions, isn’t that ironic as well, that we find bribes the solution to everything?